The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, which gets underway March 24, is doing something extra special to mark the occasion of its 10th anniversary. Organizers plan to fill a barge with 40 cherry trees in full bloom and moor it for an afternoon of free entertainment at Granville Island Public Market.

BLACK TIE ON BLACKCOMB WAY: Some 700 culturati and corporati will join Michael and Yoshiko Audain in Whistler next weekend for the Audain Art Museum’s ribbon-cutting, dress-up dinner and private and public showings. There’ll be plenty to see: 23 Emily Carr paintings, 19 by E.J. Hughes, five Jeff Walls and many aboriginal works. As for Polygon Homes board chair Audain himself, here are snapshots from past columns: as a prison guard, probation officer, social worker and housing-policy consultant before catching the building bug in 1980. Jailed as an anti-racism Freedom Rider in 1961 Mississippi. Father James named him for jockey Michael O’Leary whose long-odds win at Goodwood earned papa a bundle. Like Mick Jagger, attended the London School of Economics. Will wear black ties only until a global nuclear-arms-ban treaty is signed. Left a Lovers Ball white-faced in mid-dessert on learning of fire ravaging an unfinished Polygon project. During a photo-op with then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was told: “Young man, take off your spectacles. They’ll reflect the flash. And if you did your eye exercises properly, you wouldn’t need them.” Heard painter Gordon Smith publicly thank him and Yoshiko “for doing more for the arts than anyone else in Canada really.” After bidding $47,000 for a Smith work, said his physician advised him to wear a blood-pressure monitor at art auctions. Of taking three large glasses of red wine before transpacific flights: “I get a better sleep in Cathay Pacific business class than I do in my bed at home.”

Oh dear, the big day is closing in fast. Have you bought all your gifts? Let’s imagine you’re still looking for a present for the gardener in your life — a last-minute something you could pick up today and feel good about. I went looking this week and found 10 interesting items that might work. Take a look. You never know, one of these could be perfect.

In this month of remembrance, I will also be pausing to remember David Lam, B.C.’s first Asian-Canadian lieutenant-governor, who did so much to promote and build gardens here and to encourage gardeners to appreciate beauty.

UP ANCHOR: Gastown’s Anchor hotel replaced one 29 years older in 1912. CPR locomotives doubtless disturbed guests’ sleep by running on tracks close beside the building’s necessarily lopped-off southeast corner. Partiers and bands renewed the racket in the hotel’s rambunctious pub and subsequent Club Elite. Brothers Damon and Jason Sugar spiffed it up as sugarandsugar lounge, which became the Canvas lounge and then the Brooklyn Gastown bar where five men were stabbed in a 2014 fight. Now named Alexander Gastown, its open-well two-floor layout still echoes Anchor pub days. The joint may never have housed an illegal escort bar. But it did recently, fictionally at least, when Winfield-raised Mark Lewis directed Lochlyn Munro and others in additional scenes for his drolly dark School of Fish (school-of-fish.com). Lewis said the independent, six-episode TV series might have been a feature film like his Okanagan-shot Ill Fated. But he heeded brother Michael’s advice that “nobody will watch it other than at film festivals.” Now, with “Season 2 broadly mapped out,” the indie series needs a network — HBO Canada comes to mind — to sign on.

Gardeners at VanDusen Botanical Garden are scrambling to keep treasured plants alive. Metro Vancouver’s Stage 3 water restrictions have sent the garden’s 17 gardeners into panic mode as they drag out hoses and watering cans and try to keep rare and valuable plants alive while watering by hand.

Gardeners at VanDusen Botanical Garden are scrambling to keep treasured plants alive. Metro Vancouver’s Stage 3 water restrictions have sent the garden’s 17 gardeners into panic mode as they drag out hoses and watering cans and try to keep rare and valuable plants alive while watering by hand.

Summerland area wineries — aka the Bottleneck Drive Winery Association — are heading to Vancouver on Thursday, May 28, to raise funds for one of the city’s most treasured spaces, VanDusen Botanical Garden.

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